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Imperial Patriot:: Charles Alma Baker; The History Of Limestone Downs
Charles Alma Baker was a remarkable New Zealander. Born in Otago in 1857, he trained as a surveyor before moving to Auckland. After his marriage to Sir Frederick Whittaker’s daughter, Florence, Baker settled in Malaya. Where, over 30 years, he made a fortune from contract surveying, tin mining and later, investment in rubber.
No orthodox agriculturist, Baker challenged the conventions of his day, later in life accepting Rudolph Steiner’s then radically new theories of biodynamic farming. Baker’s proposed agricultural reforms were designed to secure the future of the British Empire. More practically his imperial patriotism took the form of a major campaign to raise funds for fighting aircraft during the First World War, and substantial personal donations then and after the Battle of Britain.
After 1918, he turned his attention to fishing, spending several months each year in New Zealand in pursuit of his hobby. A designer of reels, hooks and other fishing gear, Baker was also responsible for bringing the legendary Zane Grey to New Zealand.
In the 1920s Baker joined his nephew in a farming venture at Te Karaka station, near Port Waikato, and later bought a much larger adjacent property, Limestone Downs. For the last years of his long life, Baker poured his profits from rubber into developing Limestone Downs. After his death in 1941, the property was farmed to provide for his daughter; after she died the executors of Baker’s estate established the C. Alma Baker Trust, which uses the income from Limestone Downs for charitable purposes, especially in agricultural science and education. Under a management arrangement made with Massey University in 1981, Limestone Downs has proved a very successful testing ground for the application of intensive farming methods to a large scale property.
Thoroughly researched, lively and accessible, Imperial Patriot is both the story of a remarkable man and the history of a significant New Zealand rural experiment.